For Ms. Frizzle, Elizabeth Banks is not the most obvious choice. However, the more you think about it, the more it starts to make an odd sense. Sharp-tongued, physically devoted, and capable of genuine warmth beneath the humor, Banks brings something to the role that a more cautious casting choice most likely wouldn’t. Having officially signed Banks to star in the live-action version of The Magic School Bus and obtained the rights to the cherished children’s franchise from Universal, Legendary Entertainment obviously feels the same way.
It’s been a while. The project was initially optioned by Universal in June 2020, during that peculiar pandemic-era period when Hollywood was optioning everything nostalgic it could find. The project was put on hold for six years, which is typical for studio development but long enough that many people thought it had quietly died. It hadn’t. With a confirmed lead, a signed director, and a production deal involving Scholastic, Banks’ own Brownstone Productions, and Marc Platt Productions, Legendary has now picked it up with what seems to be real momentum.
Rob Letterman, the director, is most known for Detective Pikachu, a movie that shouldn’t have been as successful as it was. Letterman is particularly adept at adapting; he doesn’t minimize the original work or attempt to dissect it. He simply locates the narrative within and records it. Additionally, he directed the 2015 Goosebumps film starring Jack Black, demonstrating his ability to adapt beloved Scholastic properties into popular movies without totally alienating the people who grew up with them. It’s not a coincidence. Here, Legendary obviously made a conscious decision.
Beginning in 1986, Joanna Cole’s Magic School Bus books with illustrations by Bruce Degen were a mainstay in elementary school classrooms during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The idea was straightforward and wonderfully bizarre: Ms. Frizzle, a quirky red-haired teacher, takes her students on field trips in a yellow school bus that can change into a submarine, a spaceship, a cell, or a beehive, depending on the lesson. The books were instructive in a way that is only effective when a child is unaware that they are receiving instruction. They were actually humorous. They were strange in a way that was liberating rather than coercive.
Lily Tomlin voiced Ms. Frizzle in 52 episodes of the animated PBS series, which continued that tradition from 1994 to 1997. Tomlin gave the character an indescribable quality, akin to that of a carnival ringmaster or the greatest teacher you’ve never had. Kate McKinnon played the younger sister, Fiona Frizzle, when Netflix brought the idea back in 2017 with The Magic School Bus Rides Again, while Tomlin returned in a supporting role. There is still genuine love for this franchise, as evidenced by the three seasons of that series and its loyal viewership.
Whether the live-action movie can maintain that love while developing into something truly cinematic is the question it will need to address. While nostalgia is a great place to start, it’s a terrible place to end. Instead of just piling on references for one group and spectacle for the other, movies that successfully negotiate this issue—Detective Pikachu is a good example—tend to find an emotional core that both adults and children can relate to.
Whether this Magic School Bus adaptation will achieve that balance is still up in the air. It is noteworthy that there is no confirmed plot. Variety pointed out that plot details have not yet been confirmed, indicating that either they are keeping things close or the script is still being developed.
This project seems to be capitalizing on a larger cultural trend, which is the continued desire for live-action adaptations of animated films with authentic childhood significance. A few of those modifications have succeeded. Others have seemed like diminishing return exercises. The specificity of what it’s working with is what gives it a chance. There was always more to The Magic School Bus than nostalgia. It was about curiosity, the notion that education could be more of an adventure than a duty. The rest of the movie can work itself out if it manages to hold onto that.
